But that ugly brute; Mortimer, with his goggle eyes, had spoiled everything. His appearance had taken Desmond completely by surprise: to tell the truth, it had thrown our young man rather off his guard. "If only I might have had a little longer acquaintance with my part," he reflected bitterly as he sat by the fire, "I should have been better able to deal with that pompous ass!"

Afterwards, when thinking over the opening events of this extraordinary episode of his career, Desmond rather wondered why he had not followed Mortimer out of the house that afternoon and tracked him down to his hiding place. But, as a matter of fact, the idea did not occur to him at the time. His orders were positive not to leave the house, and he never even thought of breaking them—at any rate, not then.

His orders, also, it is true, were to report to headquarters any communication that might be made to him; but these instructions, at least as far as Nur-el-Din's and Mortimer's visits were concerned, he resolved to ignore.

For one thing, he felt angry with the Chief who, he argued rather irrationally, ought to have foreseen and prevented Mortimer thus taking him by surprise. The Chief liked secrets—well, for a change, he should be kept in the dark and the laugh would be on Desmond's side. For a few minutes after Mortimer's departure, Desmond had felt strongly inclined to go to the telephone which stood on the desk in the library and ring up Mr. Elias, as he should have done, but he resisted this impulse. Now, thinking things over in the firelight, he was glad he had refrained. He would ferret out for himself the exact part that Nur-el-Din and Mortimer were playing in this band of spies. Nothing definite had come of his interviews with them as yet. It would be time enough to communicate with Headquarters when he had something positive to report.

Then Desmond thrust the paper he had been studying back in his pocket-book and jumped up. He felt that the inaction was stifling him. He determined to go for a walk round the garden. That, at least, was in the spirit of his orders.

Remembering that he was supposed to be suffering from a chill he donned a heavy Ulster of Bellward's which was hanging in the hall and wound a muffler round his neck. Then cramming a soft cap on his head (he noted with satisfaction that Bellward's hats fitted him remarkably well) he opened the front door and stepped outside.

The rain had stopped, but the whole atmosphere reeked of moisture. Angry-looking, dirty-brown clouds chased each other across the lowering sky, and there was a constant sound of water, trickling and gurgling and splashing, in his ears.

An untidy-looking lawn with a few unkempt and overgrown rhododendron bushes dotted here and there ran its length in front of the house and terminated in an iron railing which separated the grounds from a little wood. A badly water-logged drive, green with grass in places, ran past the lawn in a couple of short bends to the front gate. On the other side the drive was bordered by what had once been a kitchen garden but was now a howling wilderness of dead leaves, mud and gravel with withered bushes and half a dozen black, bare and dripping apple trees set about at intervals. At the side of the house the kitchen garden stopped and was joined by a flower garden—at least so Desmond judged it to have been by a half ruined pergola which he had noticed from the drawing-room windows. Through the garden ran the mill-race which poured out of the grounds through a field and under a little bridge spanning the road outside.

Desmond followed the drive as far as the front gate. The surrounding country was as flat as a pancake, and in almost every field lay great glistening patches of water where the land had been flooded by the incessant rain. The road on which the house was built ran away on the left to the mist-shrouded horizon without another building of any kind in sight. Desmond surmised that Morstead Fen lay in the direction in which he was looking. To the right, Desmond caught a glimpse of a ghostly spire sticking out of some trees and guessed that this was Wentfield Church. In front of him the distant roar of a passing train showed where the Great Eastern Railway line lay.

More depressed than ever by the utter desolation of the scene, Desmond turned to retrace his steps to the house. Noticing a path traversing the kitchen garden, he followed it. It led to the back of the house, to the door of a kind of lean-to shed. The latch yielded on being pressed and Desmond entered the place.

He found himself in a fair-sized shed, very well and solidly built of pitch-pine, with a glazed window looking out on the garden, a table and a couple of chairs, and a large cupboard which occupied the whole of one side of the wall of the house against which the shed was built. In a corner of the shed stood a very good-looking Douglas motor-cycle, and on a nail on the wall hung a set of motor-cyclist's overalls. A few petrol cans, some full, some empty, stood against the wall.

Desmond examined the machine. It was in excellent condition, beautifully clean, the tank half full of spirits. A little dry sand on the tires showed that it had been used fairly recently.

"Old man Bellward's motor-bike that he goes to the station on," Desmond noted mentally. "But what's in the big cupboard, I wonder? Tools, I expect!"

Then he caught sight of a deep drawer in the table. It was half-open and he saw that it contained various tools and spare parts, neatly arranged, each one in its appointed place.

He went over to the cupboard and tried it. It was locked. Desmond had little respect for Mr. Bellward's property so he went over to the tool drawer and selected a stout chisel with which to burst the lock of the cupboard. But the cupboard was of oak, very solidly built, and he tried in vain to get a purchase for his implement. He leant his left hand against the edge of the cupboard whilst with his right he jabbed valiantly with the chisel.

Then an extraordinary thing happened. The whole cupboard noiselessly swung outwards while Desmond, falling forward, caught his forehead a resounding bang against the edge of the recess in which it moved. He picked himself up in a very savage frame of mind—a severe blow on the head is not the ideal cure for hypochondria—but the flow of objurgatives froze on his lips. For he found himself looking into Mr. Bellward's library.

He stepped into the room to see how the cupboard looked from the other side. He found that a whole section of bookshelves had swung back with the cupboard, in other words that the cupboard in the toolshed and the section of bookshelves were apparently all of one piece.

He carefully examined the walls on either side of the recess in the library to see how the mechanism worked. The bookshelves were open, made of mahogany, the sides elaborately carved with leaves and flowers. Desmond ran his hand down the perpendicular section immediately on the right of the recess. About halfway down—to be exact, it was in line with the fifth shelf from the floor—his fingers encountered a little knob which gave under pressure—the heart of a flower which released the section of bookshelves. Going back to the shed, Desmond examined the place against which his hand had rested as he sought to force the lock of the cupboard. As he expected, he found a similar catch let into the surface of the oak, but so cunningly inlaid that it could scarce be detected with the naked eye.

Before proceeding further with his investigations, Desmond softly turned the lock of the library door. He also shot forward a bolt he found on the inside of the door of the shed. He did not want to be interrupted by the housekeeper or the odd man.

Then he went back to the library and pulled the cupboard to behind him. It moved quite easily into place. He wanted to have a look at the bookshelves; for he was curious to know whether the cupboard was actually all of one piece with the section of bookshelves as it seemed to be. He was prepared to find that the books were merely library dummies, but no! He tried half a dozen shelves at random, and every book he pulled out was real.

Desmond was not easily baffled, and he determined to scrutinize every shelf, of this particular section in turn. With the aid of one of those step-ladders folding into a chair which you sometimes see in libraries, he examined the topmost shelves but without result. He took down in turn Macaulay's History of England, a handsome edition of the works of Swift, and a set of Moliere without getting any nearer the end of his quest.

The fourth shelf from the top was devoted to a library edition of Shakespeare, large books bound in red morocco. Desmond, who, by this time was getting cramp in the arms from stretching upwards and had made his hands black with dust, pulled out a couple of volumes at hazard from the set and found them real books like the rest.

"Oh, damn!" he exclaimed, and had half a mind to abandon the search and have a go with hammer and chisel at the cupboard in the shed. By this time it was almost dusk in the library, and Desmond, before abandoning the search, struck a match to have a final rapid glance over the shelves. The light showed him a curious flatness about the backs of the last six volumes of Shakespeare. He dropped the match and laid hold of a volume of the Comedies. It resisted. He tugged. Still it would not come. Exerting all his strength, he pulled, the gilt-lettered backs of the last six volumes came away in his hands in one piece and he crashed off the ladder to the ground.

This time he did not swear. He picked himself up quickly, lit the lamp on the table by the window, and brought it over to the bookcase. Where Shakespeare's Comedies had stood was now a gaping void with a small key stuck in a lock, above a brass handle. Desmond mounted on the steps again and eagerly turned the key. Then he grasped the handle and puled, the section of bookshelves swung back like a door, and he found himself face to face with a great stack of petrol cans. They lay in orderly piles stretching from the floor to the top of the bookshelves near the railing, several tiers deep. At a rough computation there must have been several hundred cans in the recess. And they were all full.

In a flash Desmond realized what his discovery signified. The motor-cycle in the shed without was the connecting link between Bellward and the man with whom he was co-operating in the organization. Under pretext of reading late in his library Bellward would send old Martha to bed, and once the house was quiet, sally forth by his secret exit and meet his confederate. Even when he was supposed to be sleeping in London he could still use the Mill House for a rendezvous, entering and leaving by the secret door, and no one a bit the wiser. In that desolate part of Essex, the roads are practically deserted after dark. Bellward could come and go much as he pleased on his motor-cycle. Were he stopped, he always had the excuse ready that he was going to—or returning from the station. The few petrol cans that Desmond had seen openly displayed in the shed without seemed to show that Bellward received a small quantity of spirit from the Petrol Board to take him to and from the railway.

The cache, so elaborately concealed, however, pointed to long journeys. Did Bellward undertake these trips to fetch news or to transmit it? And who was his confederate? Whom did he go to meet? Not Mortimer; for he had only, corresponded with Bellward. Nor was it Nur-el-Din; for she had never met Bellward, either.

Who was it, then?



CHAPTER XIV. BARBARA TAKES A HAND

"No luck, Mr. Marigold," said the Assistant Provost Marshal, "I'm sorry, but there it is! We've made every possible inquiry about this Private... er..." he glanced at the buff-colored leave pass in his hand, "... this Gunner Barling, but we can't trace him so far. He should have gone back to France the afternoon before the day on which you found his pass. But he hasn't rejoined his unit. He's been posted as an absentee, and the police have been warned. I'm afraid we can't do any more than that!"

The detective looked at the officer with mild reproach in his eyes.

"Dear, dear," he replied, "and I made sure you'd be able to trace him with that pass!"

He clicked his tongue against his teeth and shook his head.

"Dear, dear!" he said again.

"What's the feller been up to?" asked the A.P.M. Detectives have a horror of leading questions, and Mr. Marigold shrank visibly before the directness of the other's inquiry. Before replying, however, he measured the officer with his calm, shrewd eye. Mr. Marigold was not above breaking his own rules of etiquette if thereby he might gain a useful ally.

"Well, Captain Beardiston," he answered slowly, "I'll tell you because I think that you may be able to help me a little bit. It's part of your work to look after deserters and absentees and those sort o' folk, isn't it?"

The A.P.M. groaned.

"Part of my work?" he repeated, "it seems to be my whole life ever since I came back from the front."

"If you want to know what this young fellow has been up to," said Mr. Marigold in his even voice, "it's murder, if I'm not mistaken!"

"Murder?" echoed the other in surprise. "Why, not the Seven Kings murder, surely?"

The detective gave a brisk nod.

"That's it," he replied, "I'm in charge of that case, if you follow me. I found that pass in the front garden of the Mackwayte's house in Laleham Villas, half trodden into the earth of the flower-bed by a heavy boot, a service boot, studded with nails. There had been a lot of rain in the night, and it had washed the mosaic-tiled pathway up to the front door almost clean. When I was having a look round the garden, I picked up this pass, and then I spotted the trace of service boots, a bit faint, on the beds. You know the way the nails are set in the issue boots?"

The officer nodded:

"I ought to know that foot-print," he said. "It's all over the roads in northern France."

"We made inquiries through you," the detective resumed, "and when I found that this Gunner Barling, the owner of the pass, was missing, well, you will admit, it looked a bit suspicious."

"Still, you know," the A.P.M. objected, "this man appears to have the most excellent character. He's got a clean sheet; he's never gone absent before. And he's been out with his battery almost since the beginning of the war."

"I'm not making any charge against him as yet," answered the detective, picking up his hat, "but it would interest me very much, very much indeed, Captain Beardiston, to have five minutes' chat with this gunner. And so I ask you to keep a sharp lookout for a man answering to his description, and if you come across him, freeze on to him hard, and give me a ring on the telephone."

"Right you are," said the officer, "I'll hold him for you, Mr. Marigold. But I hope your suspicions are not well-founded."

For a brief moment the detective became a human being.

"And so do I, if you want to know," he said. "One can forgive those lads who are fighting out there almost anything. I've got a boy in France myself!"

A little sigh escaped him, and then Mr. Marigold remembered "The Yard."

"I'll bid you good-day!" he added in his most official voice and took his leave.

He walked down the steps by the Duke of York's column and through the Horse Guards into Whitehall, seemingly busy with his own thoughts. A sprucely dressed gentleman who was engaged in the exciting and lucrative sport of war profiteering turned color and hastily swerved out towards the Park as he saw the detective crossing the Horse Guards' Parade. He was unpleasantly reminded of making the acquaintance of Mr. Marigold over a bucketshop a few years ago with the result that he had vanished from the eye of his friends for eighteen months. He congratulated himself on thinking that Mr. Marigold had not seen him, but he would have recognized his mistake could he but have caught sight of the detective's face. A little smile flitted across Mr. Marigold's lips and he murmured to himself:

"Our old friend is looking very prosperous just now. I wonder what he's up to?"

Mr. Marigold didn't miss much.

The detective made his way to the Chief's office. Barbara Mackwayte, in a simple black frock with white linen collar and cuffs, was at her old place in the ante-room. A week had elapsed since the murder, and the day before, Mr. Marigold knew, the mortal remains of poor old Mackwayte had been laid to rest. He was rather surprised to see the girl back at work so soon.

She did not speak to him as she showed him into the Chief, but there was a question lurking in her gray eyes.

Mr. Marigold looked at her and gravely shook his head.

"Nothing fresh," he said.

The Chief was unusually exuberant. Mr. Marigold found him surrounded, as was his wont, by papers, and a fearsome collection of telephone receivers. He listened in silence to Mr. Marigold's account of his failure to trace Barling.

"Marigold," he said, when the other had finished, "we must undoubtedly lay hold of this fellow. Let's see now... ah! I have it!"

He scribbled a few lines on a writing-pad and tossed it across to the detective.

"If your friend's innocent," he chuckled, "that'll fetch him to a dead certainty. If he murdered Mackwayte, of course he won't respond. Read it out and let's hear how it sounds!"

The Chief leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette while the detective read out:

"If Gunner Barling, etcetera, etcetera, will communicate with Messrs. Blank and Blank, solicitors, he will hear of something to his advantage. Difficulties with the military can be arranged."

"But I say, sir," objected Mr. Marigold, "the military authorities will hardly stand for that last, will they?"

"Won't they, by Jove" retorted the Chief grimly. "They will if I tell 'em to. No official soullessness for me; thank you! And now, Marigold, just ask Matthews to fill in Barling's regimental number and all that and the name and address of the solicitors who do this kind of thing for us. And tell him we'll insert the ad. daily until further notice in the Mail, Chronicle, Daily News, Sketch, Mirror, Evening News..."

"And Star," put in Mr. Marigold who had Radical tendencies.

"The Star, too, by all means. That ought to cover the extent of your pal's newspaper reading, I fancy, eh, Marigold! Right!"

He held out a hand in farewell. But Mr. Marigold stood his ground. He was rather a slow mover, and there were a lot of things he wanted to discuss with the Chief.

"I was very sorry to see poor Major Okewood in the casualty list this morning, sir," he said. "I was going to ask you..."

"Ah, terrible, terrible!" said the Chief. Then he added:

"Just tell Miss Mackwayte I want her as you go out, will you?"

The detective was used to surprises but the Chief still bowled him out occasionally. Before he knew what he was doing, Mr. Marigold found himself in the ante-room doing as he was bid.

As soon as her father's funeral was over; Barbara had insisted on returning to work. The whole ghastly business of the murder and the inquest that followed seemed to her like a bad dream which haunted her day and night. By tacit consent no one in the office had made any further allusion, to the tragedy. She had just slipped back into her little niche, prompt, punctual, efficient as ever.

"No, it's not for the letters," the Chief said to her as she came in with her notebook and pencil. "I'm going to give you a little trip down to the country this afternoon, Miss Mackwayte... to, Essex... the Mill House, Wentfield... you know whom it is you are to see, eh? I'm getting a little restless as we've had no reports since he arrived there. I had hoped, by this, to have been able to put him on the track of Nur-el-Din, but, for the moment, it looks as if we had lost the scent. But you can tell our friend all we know about the lady's antecedents—what we had from my French colleague the other day, you know? Let him have all the particulars about this Barling case—you know about that, don't you? Good, and, see here, try and find out from our mutual friend what he intends doing. I don't want to rush him... don't let him think that... but I should rather like to discover whether he has formed any plan. And now you get along. There's a good train about three which gets you down to Wentfield in just under the hour. Take care of yourself! See you in the morning!"

Pressing a bell with one hand and lifting up a telephone receiver with the other, the Chief immersed himself again in his work. He appeared to have forgotten Miss Mackwayte's very existence.

At a quarter to five that evening, Barbara unlatched the front gate of the Mill House and walked up the drive. She had come on foot from the station and the exercise had done her good. It had been a deliciously soft balmy afternoon, but with the fall of dusk a heavy mist had come creeping up from the sodden, low-lying fields and was spreading out over the neglected garden of Mr. Bellward's villa as Barbara entered the avenue.

The damp gloom of the place, however, depressed her not at all. She exulted in the change of scene and the fresh air; besides, she knew that the presence of Desmond Okewood would dispel the vague fears that had hung over her incessantly ever since her father's murder. She had only met him twice, she told herself when this thought occurred to her, but there was something bracing and dependable about him that was just the tonic she wanted.

A porter at the station, who was very intelligent as country porters go, had told her the way to the Mill House. The way was not easy to find for there were various turns to make but, with the aid of such landmarks as an occasional inn, a pond or a barn, given her by the friendly porter, Barbara reached her destination. Under the porch she pulled the handle of the bell, all dank and glistening with moisture, and heard it tinkle loudly somewhere within the house.

How lonely the place was, thought Barbara with a little shiver! The fog was growing thicker every minute and now seemed suspended like a vast curtain between her and the drive. Somewhere in the distance she heard the hollow gurgling of a stream. Otherwise, there was no sound.

She rang the bell again rather nervously and waited. In her bag she had a little torch-light (for she was a practical young person), and taking it out, she flashed it on the door. It presented a stolid, impenetrable oaken front. She stepped out into the fog and scanned the windows which were already almost lost to view. They were dark and forbidding.

Again she tugged at the bell. Again, with a groaning of wires, responded the hollow tinkle. Then silence fell once more. Barbara began to get alarmed. What had happened to Major Okewood? She had understood that there was no question of his leaving the house until the Chief gave him the word. Where, then, was he? He was not the man to disobey an order. Rather than believe that, she would think that something untoward had befallen him. Had there been foul play here, too?

A sudden panic seized her. She grasped the bell and tugged and tugged until she could tug no more. The bell jangled and pealed and clattered reverberatingly from the gloomy house, and then, with a jarring of wires, relapsed into silence. Barbara beat on the door with her hands, for there was no knocker; but all remained still within. Only the dank mist swirled in ever denser about her as she stood beneath the dripping porch.

"This won't do!" said Barbara, pulling herself together. "I mustn't get frightened, whatever I do! Major Okewood is very well capable of defending himself. What's happened is that the man has been called away and the servants have taken advantage of his absence to go out! Barbara, my dear, you'll just have to foot it back to the station without your tea!"

She turned her back on the door and torch in hand, plunged resolutely into the fog-bank. The mist was bewilderingly thick. Still, by going slow and always keeping the gravel under her feet, she reached the front gate and turned out on the road.

Here the mist was worse than ever. She had not taken four paces before she had lost all sense of her direction. The gate, the railways, were gone. She was groping in a clinging pall of fog.

Her torch was worse than useless. It only illuminated swirling swathes of mist and confused her, so she switched it out. In vain she looked about her, trying to pick up some landmark to guide her. There was no light, no tree, no house visible, nothing but the dank, ghostly mist.

To some temperaments, Nature has no terrors. Barbara, to whose imagination an empty house at dusk had suggested all kinds of unimaginable fears, was not in the least frightened by the fog. She only hoped devoutly that a motor-car or a trap would not come along behind and run her down for she was obliged to keep to the road; the hard surface beneath her feet was her only guide.

She smiled over her predicament as she made her way along. She frequently found herself going off the road, more than once into patches of water, with the result that in a few minutes her feet were sopping. Still she forged ahead, with many vain halts to reconnoitre while the fog, instead of lifting, seemed to thicken with every step she took.

By this time she knew she was completely lost. Coming from the station there had been, she remembered, a cross-roads with a sign-board set up on a grass patch, about a quarter of a mile from the Mill House. She expected every minute to come upon this fork; again and again she swerved out to the left from her line of march groping for the sign-post with her hands but she never encountered it.

Few sounds came to break in upon the oppressive silence of the mist. Once or twice Barbara heard a train roaring along in the distance and, at one of her halts, her ear caught the high rising note of a motor engine a long way off. Except for these occasional reminders of the proximity of human beings, she felt she must be on a desert island instead of less than two score miles from London.

Her wrist watch showed her that she had walked for an hour when she heard a dog barking somewhere on the left of the road. Presently, she saw a blurred patch of radiance apparently on the ground in front of her. So deceptive are lights seen through a fog that she was quite taken aback suddenly to come upon a long low house with a great beam of light streaming out of the door.

The house was approached by a little bridge across a broad ditch. By the bridge stood a tall, massive post upon which a sign squeaked softly as it swayed to and fro. The inn was built round three sides of a square, the left-hand side being the house itself, the centre, the kitchen, and the right-hand side a tumble-down stable and some sheds.

The welcome blaze of light coming from the open door was very welcome to Barbara after her, long journey through the mist. She dragged her wet and weary feet across the little bridge and went up to the inn-door.

She stood for a moment at the entrance dazzled by the effect of the light on her eyes, which were smarting with the fog. She found herself looking into a long, narrow, taproom, smelling of stale beer and tobacco fumes, and lit by oil lamps suspended in wire frames from the raftered ceiling. The windows were curtained in cheerful red rep and the place was pleasantly warmed by a stove in one corner. By the stove was a small door apparently leading into the bar, for beside it was a window through which Barbara caught a glimpse of beer-engines and rows of bottles. Opposite the doorway in which she stood was another door leading probably to the back of the house. Down the centre of the room ran a long table.

The tap-room was empty when Barbara entered but as she sat down at the table, the door opposite opened, and a short, foreign-looking woman came out. She stepped dead on seeing the girl: Her face seemed familiar to Barbara.

"Good evening" said the latter, "I've lost my way in the fog and I'm very wet. Do you think I could have my shoes and stockings dried and get some tea? I..."

"A moment! I go to tell Meester Rass," said the woman with a very marked foreign accent and in a frightened kind of voice and slipped out by the way she came.

"Where have I met that woman before?" Barbara asked herself, as she crossed to tile stove to get warm. The woman's face seemed to be connected in her mind with something unpleasant, something she wanted to forget. Then a light dawned on her. Why, it was...

A shrill cry broke in upon her meditations, a harsh scream of rage. Barbara turned quickly and saw Nur-el-Din standing in the centre of the room. She was transfigured with passion. Her whole body quivered, her nostrils were dilated, her eyes flashed fire, and she pointed an accusing finger at Barbara.

"Ah! miserable!" she cried in a voice strangled with rage, "ah! miserable! Te voile enrol."

A cold chill struck at Barbara's heart. Wherever she went, the hideous spectre of the tragedy of her father seemed to follow her. And now Nur-el-Din had come to upbraid her with losing the treasure she had entrusted to her.

"Nur-el-Din," the girl faltered in a voice broken with tears.

"Where is it I Where is the silver box I gave into your charge? Answer me. Mais reponds, donc, canaille!"

The dancer stamped furiously with her foot and advanced menacingly on Barbara.

An undersized; yellow-faced man came quickly out of the small door leading from the bar and stood an instant, a helpless witness of the scene, as men are when women quarrel.

Nur-el-Din rapped out an order to him in a tongue which was unknown to Barbara. It sounded something like Russian. The man turned and locked the door of the bar, then stepped swiftly across the room and bolted the outer door.

Barbara recognized the threat that the action implied and it served to steady her nerves. She shrank back no longer but drew herself up and waited calmly for the dancer to reach her.

"The box you gave me," said Barbara very quietly, "was stolen from me by the person who... who murdered my father!"

Nur-el-Din burst into a peal of malicious laughter.

"And you?" she cried, "you are 'ere to sell it back to me, hein, or to get your blood money from your accomplice? Which is it?"

On this Barbara's self-control abandoned her.

"Oh, how dare you! How dare you!" she exclaimed, bursting into tears, "when that wretched box you made me take was the means of my losing the dearest friend I ever had!"

Nur-el-Din thrust her face, distorted with passion, into Barbara's. She spoke in rapid French, in a low, menacing voice.

"Do you think this play-acting will deceive me? Do you think I don't know the value of the treasure I was fool enough to entrust to your safe keeping? Grand Dieu! I must have been mad not to have remembered that no woman could resist the price that they were willing to pay for it! And to think what I have risked for it! Is all my sacrifice to have been in vain?"

Her voice rose to a note of pleading and the tears started from her eyes. Her mood changed. She began to wheedle.

"Come, ma petite, you will help me recover my little box, n'est-ce pas? You will find me generous. And I am rich, I have great savings. I can..."

Barbara put up her hands and pushed the dancer away from her.

"After what you have said to me to-night," she said, "I wouldn't give you back your box even if I had it."

She turned to the man.

"Will you tell me the way to the nearest station" she went on, "and kindly open that door!"

The man looked interrogatively at Nur-el-Din who spoke a few words rapidly in the language she had used before. Then she cried to Barbara:

"You stay here until you tell me what you have done with the box!"

Barbara had turned to the dancer when the latter spoke so that she did not notice that the man had moved stealthily towards her. Before she could struggle or cry out, a hand as big as a spade was clapped over her mouth, she was seized in an iron grip and half-dragged, half-carried out of the taproom through the small door opposite the front entrance.

The door slammed behind them and Barbara found herself in darkness. She was pushed round a corner and down a flight of stairs into some kind of cellar which smelt of damp straw. Here the grip on her mouth was released for a second but before she could utter more than a muffled cry the man thrust a handkerchief into her mouth and effectually gagged her. Then he tied her hands and feet together with some narrow ropes that cut her wrists horribly. He seemed to be able to see in the dark for, though the place was black as pitch, he worked swiftly and skillfully. Barbara felt herself lifted and deposited on a bundle of straw. In a little she heard the man's heavy foot-step on the stair, there was a crash as of a trap-door falling to, the noise of a bolt. Then Barbara fainted.



CHAPTER XV. MR. BELLWARD IS CALLED TO THE TELEPHONE

A knocking at the door of the library aroused Desmond from his cogitations. He hastened to replace the volumes of Shakespeare on their shelf and restore all to its former appearance. Then he went to the door and opened it. Old Martha stood in the hall.

"If you please, sir," she wheezed, "the doctor's come!"

"Oh," said Desmond, rather puzzled, "what doctor?"

"It's not Dr. Haines from the village, Mr. Bellward, sir," said the housekeeper, "It's a genel'man from Lunnon!"

Then Desmond remembered Crook's promise to look him up and guessed it must be he. He bade Martha show the doctor in and bring tea for two.

Desmond's surmise was right. The old woman ushered in Crook, looking the very pattern of medical respectability, with Harley Street written all over him from the crown of his glossy top-hat to the neat brown spats on his feet. In his hand he carried a small black bag.

"Well," he said, surveying Desmond, "and how do we find ourselves to-day? These chills are nasty things to shake off, my dear sir!"

"Oh, stow that!" growled Desmond, who was in little mood for joking.

"Voice inclined to be laryngeal," said Crook putting down his hat and bag on a chair, "we shall have to take care of our bronchial tubes! We are not so young as we were!"

"You can drop all that mumming, Crook!" snapped Desmond irascibly.

"Voice rotten," replied Crook calmly surveying him through his pince-nez. "Really, Major—I should say, Mr. Bellward—you must take more pains than that. You are talking to me exactly as though I were a British Tommy. Tut, tut, this will never do, sir! You must talk thicker, more guttural-like, and open the vowels well."

He had dropped his jesting manner altogether and spoke with the deep earnestness of the expert airing his pet topic. He was so serious that Desmond burst out laughing. It must be said, however, that he laughed as much like a German as he knew how. This appeared to mollify Crook who, nevertheless, read him a long lecture against ever, for a moment, even when alone, quitting the role he was playing. Desmond took it in good part; for he knew the soundness of the other's advice.

Then old Martha brought tea, and over the cups and saucers Crook gave Desmond a budget of news. He told of the warrant issued for the arrest of Nur-el-Din and of the search being made for her.

Desmond heard the news of Nur-el-Din's disappearance from London with some consternation. He began to realize that his failure to detain Nur-el-Din that afternoon might have incalculable consequences. Sunk in thought, he let Crook run on. He was wondering whether he ought to give him a message for the Chief, telling him of Nur-el-Din's visit and of her flight on the arrival of Mortimer.

Now, Desmond had a good deal of pride, and like most proud people, he was inclined to be obstinate. To confess to the Chief that he had let both Nur-el-Din and Mortimer slip through his fingers was more than he could face. He could not bear to think that the Chief might believe him capable of failure, and take independent measures to guard against possible mistakes. Also, in his heart of hearts, Desmond was angry with the Chief. He thought the latter had acted precipitately in getting out a warrant for Nur-el-Din's arrest before he, Desmond, had had time to get into the skin of his part.

So Desmond heard Crook out and made no comment. When the other asked him if he had anything to tell the Chief, he shook his head. He was not to know then the consequences which his disobedience of orders was destined to have. If he had realized what the result of his obstinacy would be, he would not have hesitated to send a full report by Crook—and this story might never have been written!

But if youth followed reason instead of impulse, the world would stand still. Desmond was still at an age at which a man is willing to take on anything and anybody, and he was confident of bringing his mission to a successful conclusion without any extraneous aid. So Crook, after changing Desmond's make-up and giving him a further rehearsal of his role, packed up his pots and paints and brushes in his black bag and returned to London with "nothing to report" as the communiques say.

He repeated his visit every day for the next four days. Crook's arrival each afternoon was the only break in the monotony of a life which was rapidly becoming unbearable to Desmond's mercurial temperament. He found himself looking forward to the wizened little man's visits and for want of better employment, he threw himself wholeheartedly into the study of his role under the expert's able direction. Desmond's beard had sprouted wonderfully, and Crook assured him that, by about the end of the week, the tow substitute, which Desmond found a most unmitigated nuisance, would be no longer necessary. He also showed his pupil how to paint in the few deft lines about the eyes which completed the resemblance between Bellward and his impersonator.

The time hung terribly heavily on Desmond's hands. He had long since memorized and destroyed the list of Mr. Bellward's friends. Every morning he spent at least an hour before the mirror in his bedroom working up the role. With every day he felt more confident of himself; with every day he grew more anxious to go to London, and, taking the bull by the horns, boldly visit one of Mr. Bellward's acquaintances and test the effect of his disguise.

But no orders came from Headquarters to release him from his confinement. Moreover, no word arrived from Nur-el-Din nor did Mortimer send any message or call again at the Mill House. The silence of the two conspirators made Desmond uneasy. Suppose Mortimer, who, he felt sure, had caught him out lying about Nur-el-Din's presence in the house at the time of his visit, had grown suspicious! What if Nur-el-Din had succeeded in making good her escape to the Continent? He had had his chance of laying hold of both suspects and he had failed. Would that chance come again?

Desmond doubted it. Every morning he awoke long before the dawn and lay awake until daylight, his mind racked by these apprehensions. He chafed bitterly at his inaction and he plied Crook with questions as to whether he had any orders for him. Each time Crook replied in the negative.

In the library Desmond found an Ordnance map of Essex. His military training had given him a good schooling in the use of maps, and he spent many hours studying the section of the country about the Mill House, seeking to impress it upon his mind against future emergencies.

He was surprised to find how remote the Mill House lay from other habitations. Between it and Wentfield station, once Wentfield village was passed, there were only a few lonely farms; but to the south there was an absolutely uninhabited tract of fen traversed by the road running past the front gate of the Mill House. The Mill House was duly marked on the map; with a little blue line showing the millrace which Desmond traced to its junction with one of the broad dykes intersecting Morstead Fen. The only inhabited house to the south of the Bellward villa appeared to be a lonely public house situated on the far edge of the fen, a couple of hundred yards away from the road. It was called "The Dyke Inn."

One afternoon—it was the fifth day after Desmond's arrival at Bellward's—Mr. Crook announced that this was to be his last visit.

"I go abroad to-night, Mr. Bellward," he said (he always insisted on addressing Desmond by his assumed name), "a little job o' work in Switzerland; at Berne, to be precise. Urgent, you might call it, and really, sir, you've made so much progress that I think I can safely leave you. And I was to say that you will be able to go out very soon now."

"Good!" exclaimed Desmond, rubbing his hands together. "And you think I'll do, Crook, eh?"

Crook rubbed his nose meditatively.

"I'll be quite frank with you, Mr. Bellward," he said: "With a superficial acquaintance, even with an intimate friend, if he's as unobservant as most people are, you'll pass muster. But I shouldn't like to guarantee anything if you were to meet, say, Mrs. Bellward, if the gentleman has got a wife, or his mother. Keep out of a strong light; don't show your profile more than you can help, and remember that a woman is a heap more observant than a man.

"That's my advice to you, sir. And now I'll take my leave! You won't want that tow beard any more after to-day."

That night Desmond slept well and did not awake until the sunshine was streaming in between the Venetian blinds in his bedroom. He felt keen and vigorous, and he had an odd feeling that something was going to happen to him that day.

It was a delicious morning, the air as balmy as spring. As he brushed his hair in front of the window, Desmond saw the peewits running about in the sunshine on the fields by the road. He made an excellent breakfast and then, lighting a pipe, opened the Times which lay folded by his plate.

He turned first, as was his daily habit, to the casualty list. There it was! Under the names of the "Killed in Action," he read: "Okewood, Major D. J. P.," followed by the name of his regiment. It gave him an odd little shock, though he had looked for the announcement every day; but the feeling of surprise was quickly followed by one of relief. That brief line in the casualty list meant the severing of all the old ties until he had hunted down his quarry.

Now he was ready to start.

He spent the morning in the garden. Here, for the first time, he met Mr. Hill, the odd man, who, on seeing him, became intensely busy picking up handfuls of leaves and conveying them to a fire which was smouldering in a corner. Desmond essayed to enter into conversation with him but the man was so impenetrably deaf that Desmond, tiring of bawling, "It's a fine day!" in Mr. Hill's ear, left him and strolled over to the shed where the motor-cycle was stored. Here he amused himself for more than an hour in taking the machine to pieces and putting it together again. He satisfied himself that the bike was in working order and filled up the tank. He had an idea that this means of conveyance might come in useful.

The day was so mild that he lunched by the open window with the sunshine casting rainbows on the tablecloth through the wine-glasses. He was just finishing his coffee when the housekeeper came in and told him he was wanted on the telephone.

Desmond sprang from his chair with alacrity. His marching orders at last! he thought, as he hurried across the hall to the library.

"Hullo!" he cried as he picked up the receiver.

"Is that Mr. Bellward?" answered a nasal voice.

"Bellward speaking!" said Desmond, wondering who had called him up. The voice was a man's but it was not the abrupt clear tones of the Chief nor yet Mr. Matthews' careful accents.

"Madame Le Bon wishes to see you!"

Madame Le Bon? thought Desmond. Why, that was the name that Nur-el-Din had given him. "I am Madame Le Bon, a Belgian refugee," she had said.

"Do you know whom I mean?" the voice continued.

"Certainly," replied Desmond. "You will come alone. Otherwise, Madame will not see you. You understand? If you do not come alone, you will waste your time!"

"Where are you speaking from?" Desmond asked.

"If you will turn to the left on leaving your front gate," the voice resumed, "and follow the road, a messenger will meet you and take you to the lady."

"But..." Desmond began.

"Will you come at once? And alone?" the nasal voice broke in sharply.

Desmond took a moment's thought. To go was to disobey orders; not to go was to risk losing a second chance of meeting Nur-el-Din. To telephone to 700 Stanning for assistance would bring a hornets' nest about his ears; yet he might only see the dancer if he went alone. He lost no time in making up his mind. The Chief must allow him latitude for meeting emergencies of this kind. He would go.

"I will come at once," said Desmond.

"Good," said the voice and the communication ceased.

Somewhere aloft there sits a sweet little cherub whose especial job is to look after the headstrong. It was doubtless this emissary of providence that leant down from his celestial seat and whispered in Desmond's ear that it would be delightful to walk out across the fen on this sunny afternoon. Desmond was in the act of debating whether he would not take the motor-bike, but the cherub's winning way clinched it and he plumped for walking.

In the hall he met the housekeeper who told him she wanted to go into Stanning to do some shopping that afternoon. Desmond told her that he himself was going out and would not be back for tea. Then, picking a stout blackthorn out of the hallstand, he strode down the drive and out into the road.

It was still beautifully fine, but already the golden sunshine was waning and there were little wisps and curls of mist stealing low along the fields. Desmond turned to the left, on leaving the Mill House, as he was bid and saw the road running like a khaki ribbon before him into the misty distance.

Swinging his stick, he strode on rapidly. The road was neglected, broken and flinty and very soft. After he had gone about a mile it narrowed to pursue its way between two broad ditches lined with pollard willows and brimful of brown peaty water. By this time he judged, from his recollection of the map, that he must be on Morstead Fen. An interminable waste of sodden, emerald green fields, intersected by ditches, stretched away on either hand.

He had walked for half an hour when he made out in the distance a clump of trees standing apart and seemingly in the middle of the fields. Then in the foreground he descried a gate. A figure was standing by it.

As he approached the gate he saw it was a small boy. On remarking the stranger, the urchin opened the gate and without looking to right or left led off down the road towards the clump of trees: Desmond followed at his leisure.

As they neared the trees, the low red roof of a house detached itself. By this time the sun was sinking in a smear of red across a delicately tinted sky. Its dying rays held some glittering object high up on the side of the house.

At first Desmond thought it was a window, but presently the light went out, kindled again and once more vanished. It was too small for a window, Desmond decided, and then, turning the matter over in his mind, as observant people are accustomed to do even with trifles, he suddenly realized that the light he had seen was the reflection of the sun on a telescope or glasses.

They were now within a few hundred yards of the house. The road had made a right angle turn to the left, but the diminutive guide had quitted it and struck out along a very muddy cart track. Shading his eyes, Desmond gazed at the house and presently got a glimpse of a figure at a window surveying the road through a pair of field glasses. Even as he looked, the figure bobbed down and did not reappear.

"They want to be sure I'm alone," thought Desmond, and congratulated himself on having had the strength of mind to break his orders.

The cart-track led up to a little bridge over a ditch. By the bridge stood a tall pole, on the top of which was a blue and gold painted sign-board inscribed, "The Dyke Inn by J. Rass." The urchin led him across the bridge and up to the door of the inn.

An undersized, yellow-faced man, wearing neither collar nor tie, came to the door as they approached. Although of short stature, he was immensely broad with singularly long arms. Altogether he had something of the figure of a gorilla, Desmond thought on looking at him.

The man put a finger up and touched his forelock.

"Madame Le Bon is upstairs waiting for you!" he said in a nasal voice which Desmond recognized as that he had heard on the telephone. "Please to follow me!"

He led the way across a long low tap-room through a door and past the open trap-door of a cellar to a staircase. On the first landing, lit by a window looking out on a dreary expanse of fen, he halted Desmond.

"That's her room," he said, pointing to a door opposite the head of the staircase, half a dozen steps up, and so saying, the yellow-faced man walked quickly downstairs and left him. Desmond heard his feet echo on the staircase and the door of the tap-room slam.

He hesitated a moment. What if this were a trap? Suppose Mortimer, growing suspicious, had made use of Nur-el-Din to lure him to an ambush in this lonely place? Why the devil hadn't he brought a revolver with him?

Then Desmond's Irish blood came to his rescue. He gave his head a little shake, took a firm hold of his stick which was a stoutish sort of cudgel and striding boldly up to the door indicated, tapped.

"Entrez!" said a pretty voice that made Desmond's heart flutter.



CHAPTER XVI. THE STAR OF POLAND

The room in which Desmond found Nur-el-Din was obviously the parlor of the house. Everything in it spoke of that dreary period in art, the middle years of the reign of Victoria the Good. The wall-paper, much mildewed in places, was an ugly shade of green and there were dusty and faded red curtains at the windows and draping the fireplace. Down one side of the room ran a hideous mahogany sideboard, almost as big as a railway station buffet, with a very dirty tablecloth. The chairs were of mahogany, upholstered in worn black horsehair and there were two pairs of fly-blown steel engravings of the largest size on the wall. In the centre of the apartment stood a small round table, covered with a much stained red tablecloth and there was a door in the corner.

The dainty beauty of Nur-el-Din made a very forlorn picture amid the unmatched savagery of this English interior. The dancer, who was wearing the same becoming gray tweed suit in which Desmond had last seen her, was sitting sorrowfully at the table when Desmond entered. At the sight of him she sprang up and ran to meet him with outstretched hands.

"Ah!" she cried, "comme je suis heureuse de vous voir! It is good of you to come!"

And then, without any warning, she burst into tears and putting her hands on the man's shoulders, hid her head against his chest and sobbed bitterly.

Desmond took one of her hands, small and soft and warm, and gently disengaged her. His mind was working clearly and rapidly. He felt sure of himself, sure of his disguise; if this were an exhibition of woman's wiles, it would find him proof; on that he was resolved. Yet, dissolved in tears as she was, with her long lashes glistening and her mouth twitching pitifully, the dancer seemed to touch a chord deep down in his heart.

"Come, come," said Desmond gutturally, with a touch of bonhomie in his voice in keeping with his ample girth, "you mustn't give way like this, my child! What's amiss? Come, sit down here and tell me what's the matter."

He made her resume her seat by the table and pulled up one of the horsehair chairs for himself. Nur-el-Din wiped her eyes on a tiny lace handkerchief, but continued to sob and shudder at intervals.

"Marie, my maid," she said in French in a broken voice, "joined me here to-day. She has told me of this dreadful murder!"

Desmond stiffened to attention. His mind swiftly reverted to the last woman he had seen cry, to Barbara Mackwayte discovering the loss of the package entrusted to her charge by the woman who sat before him.

"What murder?" he asked, striving to banish any trace of interest from his voice. He loathed the part he had to play. The dancer's distress struck him as genuine.

"The murder of Monsieur Mackwayte," said Nur-el-Din, and her tears broke forth anew.

"I have read of this in the newspapers," said Desmond. "I remember you told me he was a friend of yours."

Briefly, with many sobs, the dancer told him of the silver box which she had entrusted to Barbara Mackwayte's charge.

"And now," she sobbed, "it is lost and all my sacrifice, all my precautions, have been in vain!"

"But how?" asked Desmond. "Why should you think this box should have been taken? From what I remember reading of this case in the English newspapers there was a burglary at the house, but the thief has been arrested and the property restored. You have only to ask this Miss—what was the name? ah! yes, Mackwayte for your box and she will restore it!"

"No, no!" Nur-el-Din answered wearily, "you don't understand. This was no burglary. The man who murdered Monsieur Arthur murdered him to get my silver box."

"But," objected Desmond, "a silver box! What value has a trifling object like that? My dear young lady, murder is not done for a silver box!"

"No, no," Nur-el-Din repeated, "you don't understand! You don't know what that box contained!"

Then she relapsed into silence, plucking idly at the shred of cambric she held between her fingers.

Already dusk was falling and the room was full of shadows. The golden radiance of the afternoon had died and eerie wraiths of fog were peering-in at the window.

Desmond held his peace. He felt he was on the threshold of a confession that might rend the veil of mystery surrounding the murder at Seven Kings. He stared fixedly at the ugly red tablecloth, conscious that the big eyes of the girl were searching his face.

"You have honest eyes," she said presently. "I told you that once before... that night we met at your house... do you remember? Your eyes are English. But you are a German, hein?"

"My mother was Irish," said Desmond and felt a momentary relief that, for once, he had been able to speak the truth.

"I want a friend," the girl resumed wearily, "someone that I can trust. But I look around and I find no one. You serve the German Empire, do you not?"

Desmond bowed.

"But not the House of Hohenzollern?" the girl cried, her voice trembling with passion.

"I am not of the Emperor's personal service, if that is what you mean, madame," Desmond returned coldly.

"Then, since you are not altogether an iron Prussian," Nur-el-Din resumed eagerly, "you can differentiate. You can understand that there is a difference between working for the cause of Germany and for the personal business of her princes."

"But certainly," answered Desmond, "I am not an errand boy nor yet a detective. I regard myself as a German officer doing his duty on the front. We have many fronts besides the Western and the Eastern. England is one.

"Ah," exclaimed the girl, clasping her hands together and looking at him with enraptured eyes, "I see you understand! My friend, I am much tempted to make a confidant of you!"

Desmond looked at her but did not speak. Again he felt that silence was now his only role. He tried hard to fix his mind on his duty; but the man in him was occupied with the woman who looked so appealingly at him.

"... but if I do," the girl went on and her voice was hurried and anxious, "you must swear to me that you will respect my confidence, that you will not betray me to the others and that you will, if need be, protect me."

Seeing that Desmond remained silent, she hastened to add:

"Believe me, what I ask you to do is not in opposition to your duty. My friend, for all my surroundings, I am not what I seem. Fate has drawn me into the system of which you form part; but, believe me, I know nothing of the service to which you and Mortimer and the rest belong!"

She spoke with painful earnestness and in a tone so mournful that Desmond felt himself profoundly moved. "If only she is not acting!" he thought, and sought to shake himself free from the spell which this girl seemed able to cast about him at will.

"Promise me that you will respect my confidence and help me!" she said and held out her hand.

Desmond's big hand closed about hers and he felt an odd thrill of sympathy with her as their hands met.

"I promise!" he said and murmured to himself something very like a prayer that he might not be called upon to redeem his word.

She let her eyes rest for a moment on his.

"Be careful!" she urged warningly, while the ghost of a smile flitted across her face. "Very soon I may call upon you to make good your words!"

"I promise!" he repeated—and his eyes never left hers.

"Then," she cried passionately, "find out who has stolen for the Crown Prince the Star of Poland at the price of the life of a harmless old man!"

"The Star of Poland!" repeated Desmond. "What is the Star of Poland?"

The girl drew herself up proudly and there was a certain dignity about her manner as she answered.

"I am a Pole," she said, "and to us Poles, the Star of Poland has stood for centuries as a pledge of the restoration of our long-lost kingdom. It was the principal jewel of the Polish Coronation sword which vanished many hundreds of years ago—in the thirteenth century, one of my compatriots once told me—and it was one of the most treasured national possessions in the Chateau of our great king, John Sobieski at Villanoff, outside Warsaw. My friend, I am not religious, and since my childhood I have renounced the ancient faith of my fathers, but, when I think of the extraordinary chain of circumstances by which this treasure came into my possession, I almost believe that God has chosen me to restore this gem to the King of an independent Poland.

"Four years ago I was in the United States, a very humble dancer in vaudeville of the third or fourth class. When I was appearing at Columbus, Ohio, I met a German, a man who had been an officer in the Prussian Guard but had come to grief and had been forced to emigrate.

"This man's name was Hans von Schornbeek. Like so many German officers who go to America, in his time he had been everything—waiter, lift-man, engine-driver and heaven knows what else, but when I met him he was apparently well-off. It was only later on that I knew he was one of your principal secret agents in America.

"He praised my talents highly and offered to furnish the capital to start me as an Oriental dancer with a large company of my own. There was only one condition attaching to his offer, a condition, ma foi! which was not disagreeable to me. It was that, after six months tour in the States and Canada, I should go to Brussels and settle down there in a house that Herr von Schornbeek would present me with.

"Mon ami, in those days, I understood nothing at all of diplomacy. I knew only that I was often hungry and that I had a little talent which, were it given a chance, might keep me from want. Herr von Schornbeek fulfilled his promises to me. I had my company, I did my tour of America and Canada with great success and finally I came to Europe and made my debut at Brussels.

"I knew Brussels already from the old days. As a half-starved, unhappy child with a troupe of acrobats, I had often appeared there. But now I came to Brussels as a conqueror. A beautiful villa in the suburb of Laeken was ready to receive me and I found that a large credit had been opened in my name at one of the principal banks so that I could keep open house.

"I think I scarcely realized then the role that I was destined to fill by the German Secret Service. In all my life before, I had never been happy, I had never ceased to struggle for my bare existence, I had never had pretty clothes to wear, and motor-cars and servants of my own."

She paused and glanced around her. The room was almost dark; the fog outside hung like a veil before the window.

"Light the lamp!" she begged, "I do not like the dark!"

Desmond struck a match and kindled an oil lamp, which stood on the sideboard.

"Ah! my friend," the girl resumed. "I took my fill of life with both hands. The year was 1913. Now I know that I was one of the German agents for the penetration of Belgium in preparation of what was coming. My mission was to make friends among the Belgians and the French and the cosmopolitan society of Brussels generally, and invite them to my house where your people were waiting to deal with them.

"My pretty villa became the rendezvous for half the rascals of Europe, men and women, who used to meet there with all kinds of mysterious Germans. Sometimes there was a scandal. Once a Belgian Colonel was found shot in the billiard-room; they said it was suicide and the thing was hushed up, but dame! now that I know what I know...

"Enfin! I shut my eyes to it all... it was none of my business... and I revelled in my robes, my dancing, my new life of luxury!

"And then the war came. I was at Laeken, resting after a visit to Rome. There was a lot of talk about the war amongst the people who came to my house, but I did not see how it could affect me, an artiste, and I never read the newspapers. My German friends assured me that, in a little while, the German army would be at Brussels; that, if I remained quietly at home, all would be well. They were very elated and confident, these German friends of mine. And rightly; for within a few weeks the Germans entered the city and a General quartered himself in my villa. It was he who brought the Crown Prince to see me.

"Mon cher, you know this young man and his reputation. I am not excusing myself; but all my life had been spent up to then in the bas-fonds of society. I had never known what it was to be courted and admired by one who had the world at his feet. Parbleu! one does not meet a future Emperor every day!

"Enfin! the Prince carried me with him back to Metz, where he had his headquarters. He was very epris with me, but you know his temperament! No woman can hold him for more than a few weeks, vain and weak and arrogant as he is. But pardon! I was forgetting that you are a good German. I fear I offend your susceptibilities..."

Desmond laughed drily.

"Madame," he said, "I hope I have preserved sufficient liberty of judgment to have formed my own opinion about our future sovereign. Most Germans have..."

"Alors," she broke in fiercely, her voice shaking with passion, "you know what an ignoble canaille is this young man, without even enough decency of feeling to respect the troops of whom he has demanded such bloody sacrifices. At Metz we were near enough to the fighting to realize the blood and tears of this war. But the Prince thought of nothing, but his own amusement. To live as he did, within sound of the guns, with parties every night, women and dancing and roulette and champagne suppers—bah! c'etait trop fort! It awakened in me the love of country which lies dormant in all of us. I wanted to help my country, lest I might sink as low as he..."

"One day the Prince brought a young officer friend of his to dine with me. This officer had come from the Eastern front and had been present at the capture of Warsaw. After dinner he took a leather case out of his pocket and said to the Prince: 'I have brought your Imperial Highness a little souvenir from Poland!' As he spoke he touched a spring and the case flew open, displaying an enormous diamond, nearly as big as the great Orloff diamond which I have seen at Petrograd, surrounded by five other brilliants, the whole set like a star.

"'The Star of Poland,' said the young officer (the Prince called him 'Erich;' I never heard his full name), 'it comes from the long-lost Coronation sword of the Polish kings. I took it for your Imperial Highness from the Chateau of John Sobieski at Villanoff.

"I could not take my eyes off the gem. As the Prince held it down under the lamp to study it, it shone like an electric light. I had met many of my fellow countrymen in America and I had often heard of this jewel, famous in our unhappy history.

"The Prince, who was gay with champagne, laughed and said:

"'These lousy Poles will have no further use for this pretty trinket, thanks to our stout German blows, will they, Erich?'

"And his friend replied:

"'We'll give them a nice new German constitution instead, your Imperial Highness!'

"The Prince, as I have said, was very merry that night. He let me take the jewel from its case and hold it in my hands. Then I fastened it in my hair before the mirror and turned to show myself to the Prince and his companion.

"'Donnerwetter! said Willie. 'It looks wonderful in your hair, Marcelle!'

"Then, as if struck by a sudden thought, he cried:

"'Erich! What do you say, Marcelle is a Pole. She shall have the Star of Poland and wear it in memory of me!'

"The other thought this a famous idea, and so the jewel passed into my hands. That same evening I resolved that it should be a sacred duty on my part to keep it in safety until I could hand it back to the lawful sovereign of an independent Poland.

"I was very unhappy at Metz until the Star of Poland came to comfort me. When I was alone, I used to take it from its case and feast my eyes upon it. I made many attempts to get away, but the Prince would never let me go, though he had long since tired of me and I was merely one of his harem of women. Pfui!"

She gave an exclamation of disgust.

"It was the Crown Princess who eventually came to my rescue," she continued. "Long-suffering wife as she is, the stories that came to her ears from Metz were such that she went to the Emperor and declared that she would insist upon a divorce. There was a great scandal. The Prince's headquarters were moved and at length I got my release.

"I had no money. This was a detail which the Prince overlooked. But I wanted to resume my stage work, so, with great difficulty, through the influence of the Prince, I obtained a passport to Holland and from there got across to England.

"I had hoped to turn my back once and for all on my connection with the Prince. But your German Secret Service had been warned about me. The Imperial Authorities were obviously afraid that I might tell tales out of school. Scarcely had I arrived in London when a man who called himself Bryan Mowbury, but who looked and spoke like a German, came to see me and said he had been instructed to 'look after me.' What that meant, I was soon to discover. In a very few days I found that I was under the supervision of your Secret Service here. In fact, Mowbury gave me to understand that any indiscretion on my part as to my stay at Metz would result in my immediate denunciation to the English police as a spy.

"My friend, I had no alternative. I am not German; I am not English; I am a Pole. I have good friends in Germany, I have good friends in England, and their quarrels are not mine. I held my peace about the past and submitted to the incessant watch which Mowbury and his friends kept on my movements.

"And then one day I had a letter. It was from Count Plettenbach, the Crown Prince's aide-de-camp, as I knew by the hand-writing, for it was signed with an assumed name. In this letter the Count, 'on behalf of a mutual friend,' as he put it, requested me to hand back to a certain Mr. Mortimer, his accredited representative, 'Erich's present.' There were cogent reasons, it was added, for this unusual request.

"I sent no reply to that letter, although an address in Switzerland was given to which an answer might be despatched. I was resolved, come what may, not to part with the Star of Poland. When Mortimer came, five days later, I told him the jewel was not mine to hand over, that it was part of the regalia of Poland and that I would never give it up.

"Mortimer replied that the German and Austrian Governments had decided to restore the independence of Poland, that probably an Austrian Archduke would be made king and that it was essential that the Star of Poland should be restored in order to include it in the regalia for the Coronation. But I knew what this Austro-German kingdom of Poland was to be, a serf state with not a shadow of that liberty for which every Pole is longing. Since I have been in England, I have kept in touch with the Polish political organizations in this country. Rass, as he calls himself, the landlord of this inn, is one of the most prominent of the Polish leaders in England.

"Mortimer reasoned with me in vain and finally went away empty-handed. But he did not abandon hope. Four successive attempts were made to get the jewel away from me. Twice my apartments at the Nineveh Hotel were rifled; once my dressing-room at the theatre was entered and searched whilst I was on the stage. But I wore the jewel day and night in a little bag suspended by a chain from my neck and they never got it from me.

"Two days before I came down to your house—it was the day before the murder—I was hustled by a group of men as I came out of the theatre. Fortunately the stage-door keeper came up unexpectedly and the men made off. But the encounter frightened me, and I resolved to break my contract with the Palaceum and bury myself down here in the country.

"But somehow Mortimer learnt of my intention. The next night—it was the night of the murder—he came to the theatre and warned me against trying to elude his vigilance by flight. I have never forgotten his words.

"'I can afford to wait,' he said, 'for I shall get what I want: I always do. But you have chosen to set yourself against me and you will bitterly repent it!"

As though the recollection proved too much for her, Nur-el-Din broke off her narrative and covered her face with her hands.

"And do you think that Mortimer did this murder?" asked Desmond gently.

Wearily the girl raised her head.

"Either he or one of his accomplices, of whom this girl is one!" she answered.

"But why not have put the jewel in a bank or one of the safe deposits? Surely it was risky to have entrusted it to a girl of whom you knew nothing?"

"My friend,", said the dancer, "I was desperate. Mortimer sees and knows all. This unexpected meeting with the daughter of my old friend seemed at the moment like a heaven-sent chance to place the jewel, unknown to him, in safe hands. I felt that as long as I carried it on me, my life was in constant danger. It was only to-day, when I heard of the murder, that it dawned on me how indiscreet I had been. I might have guessed, since Miss Mackwayte knew Mortimer—"

"Miss Mackwayte knows Mortimer?" echoed Desmond in stupefaction.

"But certainly," replied Nur-el-Din. "Was it not I myself—" She broke off suddenly with terror in her eyes.

"Ah, no!" she whispered. "It is enough. Already I have said too much..."

Desmond was about to speak when the door opened and a foreign-looking maid, whom Desmond remembered to have seen in the dancer's dressing-room, came in. She went swiftly to her mistress and whispered something in her ear.

The dancer sprang to her feet.

"A little moment... you will excuse me..." she cried to Desmond and ran from the room. The maid followed her, leaving Desmond alone.

Presently, the sound of Nur-el-Din's voice raised high in anger struck on his ears. He stole softly to the door and opened it. Before him lay the staircase deserted. He tiptoed down the stairs to the first landing and listened. The murmur of voices reached him indistinctly from the room below. Then he heard Nur-el-Din crying out again in anger.

He craned his ear over the well of the staircase, turning his face to the window which stood on the landing. The window gave on a small yard with a gate over which a lamp was suspended and beyond it the fen now swathed in fog. The dancer's maid stood beneath the lamp in earnest conversation with a man in rough shooting clothes who held a gun under his arm. As Desmond looked the man turned his head so that the rays of the lamp fell full upon his face. To his unspeakable consternation and amazement, Desmond recognized Strangwise.



CHAPTER XVII. MR. BELLWARD ARRANGES A BRIDGE EVENING

Oblivious of the voices in the room below, Desmond stood with his face pressed against the glass of the window. Was Strangwise staying at "The Dyke Inn"? Nothing was more probable; for the latter had told him that he was going to spend his leave shooting in Essex, and Morstead Fen must abound in snipe and duck.

But he and Strangwise must not meet. Desmond was chary of submitting his disguise to the other's keen, shrewd eyes. Strangwise knew Nur-el-Din: indeed, the dancer might have come to the inn to be with him. If he recognized Desmond and imparted his suspicions to the dancer, the game world be up; on the other hand, Desmond could not take him aside and disclose his identity; for that would be breaking faith with the Chief. There was nothing for it, he decided, but flight.

Yet how could he get away unobserved? There was no exit from the staircase by the door into the tap-room where Nur-el-Din was, and to go through the tap-room was to risk coming face to face with Strangwise.

So Desmond remained where he was by the window and watched. Presently, the woman turned and began to cross the yard, Strangwise, carrying his gun, following her. Desmond waited until he heard a door open somewhere below and then he acted.

Beside the window ran an old lead water-pipe which drained the roof above his head. On a level with the sill of the landing below, this pipe took a sharp turn to the left and ran diagonally down to a tall covered-in water-butt that stood on the flat roof of an outhouse in the little yard.

Desmond raised the window very gently and tested the pipe with his hand. It seemed rather insecure and shook under his pressure. With his eye he measured the distance from the sill to the pipe; it was about four feet. Desmond reckoned that, if the pipe would hold, by getting out of the window and hanging on to the sill, he might, by a pendulum-like motion, gain sufficient impulse to swing his legs across the diagonally-running pipe, then transfer his hands and so slide down to the outhouse roof.

He wasted no time in debating the chances of the pipe collapsing under his weight. All his life it had been his practice to take a risk, for such is the Irish temperament—if the object to be attained in any way justified it; and he was determined to avoid at all costs the chance of a meeting with Strangwise. The latter had probably read the name of Okewood in that morning's casualty list, but Desmond felt more than ever that he distrusted the man, and his continued presence in the neighborhood of Nur-el-Din gravely preoccupied him.

He stood a moment by the open window and listened. The murmur of voices went on in the taproom, but from another part of the house he heard a deep laugh and knew it to be Strangwise's. Trusting to Providence that the roof of the outhouse would be out of sight of the yard door, Desmond swung his right leg over the window-sill and followed it with the other, turning his back on the yard. The next moment he was dangling over the side of the house.

Then from the yard below he heard Strangwise call:

"Rufus! Rufus!"

A heavy footstep sounded on the flags. Desmond remained perfectly still. The strain on his arms was tremendous. If Strangwise should go as far as the gate, so as to get clear of the yard, he must infallibly see that figure clinging to the window-sill.

"Where the devil is that doggy" said Strangwise. Then he whistled, and called again:

"Rufus! Rufus!"

Desmond made a supreme effort to support the strain on his muscles. The veins stood out at his temples and he felt the blood singing in his ears. Another minute and he knew he must drop. He no longer had the power to swing himself up to the window ledge again.

A bark rang out in the courtyard, followed by the patter of feet. Desmond heard Strangwise speak to the dog and reenter the house. Then silence fell again. With a tremendous effort Desmond swung his legs athwart the pipe, gripped it with his right hand, then his left, and very gently commenced to let himself down. The pipe quivered beneath his weight, but it held fast and in a minute he was standing on the roof of the outhouse, cautiously peering through the dank fog that hung about the yard.

Screening himself from view behind the tall waterbutt, he reconnoitred the back of the inn. The upper part of the house was shrouded in darkness, but a broad beam of light from a half-open door and a tall window on the ground floor cleft the pall of fog. The window showed a snug little bar with Strangwise standing by the counter, a glass in his hand. As Desmond watched him, he heard a muffled scream from somewhere within the house. Strangwise heard it too, for Desmond saw him put his glass down on the bar and raise his head sharply. There followed a dull crash from the interior of the inn and the next moment the yellow-faced man, whom Desmond judged to be Rass, stepped into the circle of light inside the window. He said something to Strangwise with thumb jerked behind him, whereupon the latter clapped him, as though in approval, on the shoulder, and both hurried out together.

Puzzled though he was by the scene he had just witnessed, Desmond did not dare to tarry longer. The roof of the outhouse was only some ten feet from the ground, an easy drop. He let himself noiselessly down and landing on his feet without mishap, darted out of the yard gate. As he did so, he heard the inn door open and Strangwise's voice cry out:

"Who's that?"

But Desmond heeded not. He dashed out upon the fen. Before he had gone a dozen paces the fog had swallowed up inn and all. Out of the white pall behind him he heard confused shouts as he skirted swiftly round the house and reached the road.

Once he had gained the freedom of the highway; Desmond breathed again. The dense fog that enveloped him, the hard road beneath his feet, gave him a sense of security that he had missed as long as he was in the atmosphere of that lonely, sinister place. He struck out at a good pace for home, intent upon one thing, namely, to send an immediate summons for help to surround the Dyke Inn and all within it. Nur-el-Din, it was clear, whether a spy or no (and Desmond believed her story), was the only person who could throw any light on the mysterious circumstances surrounding old Mackwayte's murder. Besides, her arrest would safeguard her against further machinations on the part of Mortimer, though Desmond suspected that the latter, now that he had secured the jewel, would leave the dancer in peace. As for Strangwise, it would be for him to explain as best he could his continued association with a woman for whose arrest a warrant had been issued.

Desmond let himself in with his key. The housekeeper had returned and was laying the dinner-table. In the library the curtains were drawn and a fire burned brightly in the grate. The room looked very snug and cosy by contrast with the raw weather outside.

Desmond shut and locked the door and then went to the telephone at the desk. "Ring up 700 Stanning"—he repeated his instructions to himself "and ask for Mr. Elias. Assistance'll be with you within fifteen minutes afterwards."

By the clock on the mantelpiece it was a quarter to seven. If aid arrived promptly, with a car they could be at the Dyke Inn by a quarter past seven.

The telephone gave no sign of life. Desmond impatiently jerked the receiver hook up and down. This time, at least, he would not fail, he told himself. Before he went to bed that night Nur-el-Din, her maid, Rass, and if needs be, Strangwise (who needed a lesson to teach him discretion), should be in custody.

Still no reply.

"Hullo! Hullo!" cried Desmond, depressing the hook repeatedly. "Hullo, Exchange!"

But there was no answer. Then it struck Desmond that the line was dead: his ear detected none of that busy whirr which is heard in the telephone when one is waiting to get a number.

He spent five minutes in vain attempts to obtain a reply, then abandoned the endeavor in disgust.

"I shall have to take the motor-bike and go over to Stunning," he said to himself, "how I shall find my way there in this fog, the Lord only knows! And I don't know whom to apply to when I get there. The police-station, I suppose!"

He unlocked the door and rang for Martha.

"I have to go over to Stunning, Martha," he said, "I will try and be back for dinner at eight!"

He had no intention of accompanying the party to the Dyke Inn. He must preserve his incognito until Mortimer, the main quarry, had been run down.

He filled his case from the box of cigarettes on the table and thrust a box of matches into his pocket to light his head-lamp. Then, taking a cap from the hat-stand, he opened the front door. Even as he did so a big open car slowed down throbbing outside the porch. A man sprang out and advanced into the light streaming from the front door into the eddying mist. It was Mortimer.

"Fortune," thought Desmond, "has broken her rule. She has given me a second chance!"

"Well met, Bellward!" cried Mortimer, blinking at the other through his thick glasses. "Tut, tut! What a night! You were never going out, I swear."

Already Desmond had decided in his mind the course of action he would pursue. For the moment he must let the party at the Dyke Inn slide in favor of the bigger catch. He must slip away later and have another try at the telephone and if it were still out of order, he must endeavor to overpower Mortimer and then go for assistance himself. On a night like this it was useless to think of employing a half-blind old dolt like Martha to take a message. As for the odd man, he lived at Wakefield, and went away at dusk every evening.

So Desmond muttered some plausible lie about wanting to have a look at the weather and cordially invited Mortimer in.

"You will stay for dinner" he said.

"Gladly," replied the other, sinking with aunt into the settee. "And I should be glad if we might dine early."

Desmond raised his eyebrows.

"... Because," Mortimer resumed, "I have ventured to ask a few friends round here to... to have an evening at bridge. Doubtless, you have cards, eh?"

Desmond pointed to a card-table standing in the corner with several packs of cards and markers. Then he rang and told the housekeeper that they would dine as soon as possible.

"The coming fortnight," said Mortimer, tucking his napkin into his collar as they sat at the dinner table, "is pregnant with great events. No less than ten divisions are, I understand, to be transferred to the other side. I have waited to communicate with you until I had confirmation of this report. But now that the matter has been decided, it only remains for us to perfect our arrangements for communicating these plans to our friends beyond the North Sea. Therefore, I thought a friendly bridge evening at the hospitable home of our dear colleague Bellward would be in place."

He smiled affably and bent over his soup-plate.

"I shall be delighted to receive our friends," Desmond replied, "a glass of sherry?"

"Thank you," said Mortimer.

"I shall have to provide a few refreshments," said Desmond. "May I ask how many guests I may expect?"

Mortimer reckoned on his fingers.

"Let's see," he answered, "there's Max, that's one, and Madame Malplaquet, that's two. No. 13 and Behrend makes four and myself, five!"

"And Madame Nur-el-Din?" queried Desmond innocently, but inwardly quaking at his rashness.

Mortimer genially shook a finger at him.

"Sly dog!" he chuckled, "you're one too many for me in that quarter, I see! I know all about your tete-a-tete with our charming young friend this afternoon!"

Desmond felt the blood rush to his face. He thought of Nur-el-Din's words: "Mortimer sees and knows all." He picked up his sherry glass and drained it to cover his confusion.

"... It was hardly gallant of you to bolt so suddenly and leave the lady!" Mortimer added.

How much did this uncanny creature know?

Without waiting for him to reply, Mortimer went on.

"I suppose she told you a long story of my persecution, eh, Bellward? You needn't shake your head. I taxed her with it and she admitted as much."

"I had no idea that you were staying at the Dyke Inn!" said Desmond at a venture.

"My friend," replied Mortimer, lowering his voice, "your fair charmer is showing a decided inclination to make a nuisance of herself. I have had to keep an eye on her. It's been a very serious inconvenience to my plans, I can assure you. But you haven't answered my question. What sent you away in such a hurry this afternoon? and in so romantic a fashion? By the window, was it not?"

Through sheer apprehension, Desmond was now keyed up to a kind of desperate audacity. The truth is sometimes a very effective weapon in the game of bluff, and Desmond determined to employ it.

"I saw someone I didn't want to meet," he replied.

"Ah!" said Mortimer, "who was that, I wonder? The Dyke Inn could hardly be described as a frequented resort, I imagine!"

The entry of old Martha to change the plates prevented Desmond from replying. He used the brief respite to review the situation. He would tell Mortimer the truth. They were man to man now and he cared nothing even if the other should discover the fraud that had been practised upon him. Come what might, Mortimer, dead or alive, should be delivered up to justice that night.

The housekeeper left the room and Desmond spoke.

"I saw an officer I knew in the courtyard," he said.

"Oh, Strangwise, I suppose!" said Mortimer carelessly. "There's nothing to fear from him, Bellward. He's of the beef and beer and no brains stamp of British officer. But how do you know Strangwise?"

"I met him at the Nineveh Hotel in town one night," replied Desmond. "I don't care about meeting officers, however, and that's a fact!"

Mortimer looked at him keenly for a brief instant. "What prudence!" he cried. "Bellward, you are the very model of what a secret agent should be! This pheasant is delicious!"

He turned the conversation into a different channel but Desmond could not forget that brief searching look. His mind was in a turmoil of half-digested facts, of semi-completed deductions. He wanted to go away somewhere alone and think out this mystery and disentangle each separate web of this baffling skein of intrigue.

He must focus his attention on Mortimer and Nur-el-Din. If Mortimer and Strangwise were both staying at the Dyke Inn, then they were probably acquainted. Strangwise knew Nur-el-Din, too, knew her well; for Desmond remembered how familiarly they had conversed together that night in the dancer's dressing-room at the Palaceum. Strangwise knew Barbara Mackwayte also. Nur-el-Din had introduced them, Desmond remembered, on that fateful night when he had accompanied Strangwise to the Palaceum. Strange, how he was beginning to encounter the man Strangwise at every turn in this sinister affair.

And then, with a shock that struck him like a blow in the face, Desmond recalled Barbara's parting words to him in the taxi. He remembered how she had told him of seeing Nur-el-Din's face in the mirror as the dancer was talking to Strangwise that night at the Palaceum, and of the look of terror in the girl's eyes. Nur-el-Din was terrified of Mortimer; for so much she had admitted to Desmond that very afternoon; she was terrified of Strangwise, too, it seemed, of this Strangwise who, like Mortimer, kept appearing at every stage of this bewildering affair. What confession had been on Nur-el-Din's lips when she had broken off that afternoon with the cry:

"Already I have said too much!"

Thereafter Desmond's eyes were never long absent from Mortimer's face, scrutinizing each feature in turn, the eyes, set rather close together, grotesquely shielded by the thick spectacles, the narrow cheeks, the rather cynical mouth half hidden by the heavy, drooping moustache, the broad forehead broken by a long lock of dark hair brushed out flat in a downward direction from an untidy, unkempt crop.

They talked no more of Strangwise or of Nur-el-Din. The rest of dinner was passed in conversation of a general order in which Mr. Mortimer showed himself to great advantage. He appeared to be a widely traveled, well-read man, with a fund of dry, often rather grim humor. And all the time Desmond watched, watched, unobtrusively but unceasingly, looking out for something he was confident of detecting through the suave, immobile mask of this brilliant conversationalist.

Skillfully, almost imperceptibly, Desmond edged the talk on to the war. In this domain, too, Mortimer showed himself a man of broad views, of big, comprehensive ideas. Towards the strategy and tactics of the two sides, he adopted the attitude of an impartial onlooker, but in his comments he proved himself to have a thorough grasp of the military situation. He talked freely and ably of such things as tanks, the limited objective in the attack and the decentralization of responsibility in the field.

Encouraged by his volubility, for he was a man who delighted in conversation, Desmond gradually gave the talk a personal turn. But willing as Mortimer showed himself to discuss the war generally, about his personal share he was as mute as a fish. Try as he would Desmond could get nothing out of him. Again and again, he brought the conversation round to personal topics; but every time his companion contrived to switch it back to general lines.

At last Desmond risked a direct question. By this time a pint of Pommery and Greno was tingling in his veins and he felt he didn't care if the roof fell in.

"Ever since Nur-el-Din told me you were of the Crown Prince's personal service," he said, "I have been devoured with curiosity to know what you were doing before you came to England. Were you at Metz with his Imperial Highness? Did you see the assault at Verdun? Were you present at the capture of the Fort of Douaumont?"

Mortimer shook his head, laughing, and held up a deprecating hand.

"Professional discretion, my dear fellow, professional discretion!" he retorted. "You know what it is!"

Then lowering his voice, he added:

"Between ourselves the less said about my connection with Master Willie the better. Our colleagues are already restless at what they consider my neglect of my professional work. They attribute it to the wiles of Nur-el-Din. They may if they like and I don't propose to disillusion them. You understand, Bellward?"

His voice was commanding and he bent his brows at Desmond, who hastened to protest that his discretion in the matter would be absolute.

When they had had their coffee and Mortimer was contentedly puffing one of Bellward's excellent double Coronas, Desmond rose from the table.

"If you will excuse me a minute," he said, "I will just go across to the library and see if my housekeeper has put all in order for our guests!"

Instantly Mortimer got up from the table.

"By all means," he said, and emptied his glass of brandy, "so, I will come with you!"

Mortimer meant to stick to him, thought Desmond; that was evident. Then an idea struck him. Why should he not telephone in Mortimer's presence? To ask for Mr. Elias was in no way incriminating and if help came promptly, Mortimer could be secured and the other spies pounced upon in their turn as they arrived.

Therefore, as soon as they reached the library, Desmond walked over to the desk and picked up the telephone receiver from its hook.

"Excuse me," he said to Mortimer, "I had forgotten I had to ring up Stanning!"

"Oh, dear," said Mortimer from his place on the hearth rug where he was warming his coat tails in front of the fire, "isn't that unfortunate? I wish I had known! Tut, tut, how annoying for you!"

The telephone seemed quite dead.

"I don't understand!" said Desmond to Mortimer. "What's annoying?"

"The telephone, my dear Bellward,"—Mortimer spoke in a pompous voice—"the telephone is the symbol of the age in which we live, the age of publicity but also of indiscretion. It is almost as indiscreet to have a telephone in your house as to keep a diary. Therefore, in view of our little party here this evening, to prevent us from being disturbed in any way, I took the liberty of... of severing the connection... temporarily, mind you, only temporarily; it shall be restored as soon as we break up. I have some small acquaintance with electrical engineering."

Desmond was silent. Disappointment had deprived him for the moment of the power of speech. It was to be man to man then, after all. If he was to secure Mortimer and the rest of the gang that night, he must do it on his own. He could not hope for aid. The prospect did not affright him. If Mortimer could have seen the other's eyes at that moment he might have remarked a light dancing in them that was not solely of Messrs. Pommery and Greno's manufacture.